Short wins Bunratty Masters

Bunratty Chess Festival 2016

By Gerry Graham

Bunratty is a tiny village in county Clare, in the West of Ireland and it has very few residents.  In fact, it’s more like a tourist destination rather than a village.  It has a world famous castle and one of the oldest pubs in Ireland, Durty Nellies, which stands in the shadows of the 15^th century castle.

Once a year, Bunratty is invaded by Chess players who come from far and wide to do battle for each of the four titles at stake, the Minor, Major, Challengers, and of course, the famous premier event, the Bunratty Masters.  In this, the 23^rd Bunratty Chess Festival, there were seven grandmasters, five international masters and three FIDE masters among the competitors, top seed was the English grandmaster Nigel Short ( 2684 )

Nigel is seen here in his first round encounter with Ioana Gelip of Romania ( 2132 ).  Ioana played the early part of the game a bit carelessly and found herself down two pawns but somewhere after that, Nigel drifted a bit and gave her a small chance, but Ioana didn’t capitalise and so, Nigel bagged the full point.

Ioana Gelip

Nigel Short

Most of the first round games went to seeding, but not all of them.  A Bunratty regular, Thomas Rendle, international master from England ( 2366 ) was beaten by Kieran Moynihan from Cork and Mark Heidenfeld was held to a draw by Anthony Fox. Peter Cafolla managed to claim the full point against Conor O’Donnell in the only other game to go against the seed.  While the 15 year old Romanian FM, Mihnea Costachi was the higher seed and won in the first round, the final move of the game was rather pleasing, a nice queen sacrifice!

Thomas Rendle

We had to wait until round 3 to get our first all GM clashes and while Peter Wells and Oleg Korneev were sharing the point on board 2, Alex Baburin was pushing hard for a win against Nigel Short on the top board, but as you’ll see in the game, he didn’t make it.

Peter Wells

Oleg Korneev

Round 4 also had a few all GM clashes as Simon Williams, AKA The Ginger GM, took on Peter Wells.

Simon is pictured here “preparing” for this game.

In round 4 Sam Collins, Ireland’s No. 1 “home grown” player, took on Oleg Korneev, and it looks from the picture take here at the start of the game, Sam expected it to be thirsty work.

Saturday at the Bunratty Chess Festival is a brutal affair, three games in one day can be really tough. Nigel’s three opponents were FM Pierre Villegas, Alexander Baburin and Mark Hebden!

Short against Hebden

This makes Sunday morning an even tougher affair, Nigel faced Simon Williams at 9:15am. As Nigel himself said after the event, energy levels are a very important part of these types of events.

Mark Heidenfeld lost to Oleg Korneev while Gawain Jones and Sam Collins had a hard fought draw but on board 1, Nigel Short looked to be in a bit of trouble early on in his game against the Ginger GM.  He did manage to escape into a technical ending which he really couldn't lose but winning it would be another matter.  He had a little help from Simon though, his b4 to try to get activity was a bit too ambitious.

Gawain Jones

Mark Hebden

Nigel has played the Bunratty Masters 4 times before and while he's tied for first place, he'd never won the title. Now being a full point ahead going into the final round, he'd never get a better chance. All that stood in his way was a last round game against Oleg Korneev.

Here's what the final round top pairings looked like:

...

Richard Bates managed to beat Simon Williams in a fine game which is well worth a look and Gawain Jones victory over Mark Hebden is also quite nice but there would be little point in looking at the quick GM draw that gave Nigel Short his first Bunratty Masters title.  A delighted Nigel gave a victory speech at the prize giving in which he called Bunratty “The Rolls Royce of Chess Weekenders”.

Next year’s Bunratty’s dates are February 17^th to 19^th 2017 and we hope to have Alina l’Ami back to do her usual excellent report then.  Alina would have been here again only for the clash with the Women’s Grand Prix in Iran.

The winner: Nigel Short

Final standings Masters

Malcolm Pein

Henry Li

Jonathan O'Connor

Games

Alice O'Gorman played in the Challengers.

As did Stephen Short

M. Fitzgerald honors the winner of the Minor's, Padraig Dwyer

The winner of the Challengers, Sylvester Sudolski 

Liam P. Fahy (right) won the Major

Results:

http://bunrattychess.com/results_masters.html

http://bunrattychess.com/results_challengers.html

http://bunrattychess.com/results_major.html

http://bunrattychess.com/results_minor.html